frank_vanriper's Full Review: Hasselblad 501CM Film Camera
The Finest All-Around Pro System
By Frank Van Riper
Professional photographer, author and photography columnist of <Washingtonpost.com>
A long time ago, as I was borrowing some pricey bit of equipment from Nikon Professional Services in Washington, Scott Andrews, the head of the office, asked me why I kept raving about my Hasselblads.
“After all,” Scott said, “it’s just a box.”
“Ah, but what a box,” I replied, with Zen-like calm and detachment.
In truth, I regard Hasselblad as the perfect camera system—and the all-manual 501CM may be the quintessence of dependable, trouble-free photography gear.
Think of the Swedish-made Hasselblad as a Volvo with film.
A totally modular system, the medium format Hassy breaks down into its component parts with startling ease—so that it does look, in Scott Andrews’ term, just like a box. The viewfinder comes off, the lens comes off, the film back comes off, leaving you with an all-metal chamber with a matte-black interior whose main purpose is to provide a way for you to crank your film to the next exposure.
This modular construction means you can customize your picture-taking with ease, changing viewing screens, focusing hoods, film formats, films and—obviously—lenses. No other system in any format affords such easy adaptability.
But if a chameleon-like ability to change were all Hasselblad offered, I wouldn’t be raving about this camera, or the rest of the Hassy line.
Simply put, in medium format, Hasselblad is the absolute best—bar none. I have used my three Hassy bodies for more than a decade and a half. Save for routine maintenance—and one time when I experienced a film jam after working the better part of an afternoon in a swarm of sawdust at a duck decoy plant—these cameras have been trouble-free. For all the other medium format systems I have used, including ones made by Fuji and Mamiya, none has given me the flexibility I have with Hassy.
Nor, for that matter, such a wonderful array of lenses.
The Hasselblad line of lenses includes some of the finest glass on the planet, made by venerable Zeiss Optical. My current trio of lenses includes the 80mm f. 2.8 Planar (normal,) 50mm f. 4 Distagon (medium wide) and 150mm f. 4 Sonnar portrait lens. There are many more, but at something like $1500 a pop, I’m fine for now. [For specialized uses, I also have the phenomenal—and phenomenally expensive--Superwide C/M. See my separate review of that great system.]
Though the Hasselblad is traditionally a square format system—in fact, it all but pioneered 2 ¼”x 2 ¼”square format—any Hassy easily can be turned into a 645 camera simply by slapping on a 645 film magazine. This will give you a slightly smaller, rectangular, image and therefore 15 exposures on a traditional roll of 120 film instead of the usual 12. Still, most Hassy users prefer square format, and I am among them. It has become fashionable among some these days to deride square format as, well, “square,” but I find a certain formality to square that works well for most of the work I do. It is perfect for portraiture, less wonderful for landscape, but superb for product work. And, as someone who has shot his share of album covers, Hassy is made for CD’s and, before that, LPs.
I said earlier I viewed this as the perfect system. Sure, I love 35mm for is flexibility and speed. No one can take away my Nikons or Leicas, and nobody ever said you would break speed records working with the agreeably clunky 501 CM, or any of its more electronically sophisticated brethren. But there simply is no getting around the fact that square format film offers some triple the area of its 35mm counterpart. This gorgeously huge negative or transparency lends itself to proportionately huge enlargement.
Finally, with the 501CM there is another element of reliability that goes beyond mere ruggedness or smart design. This is an all-manual camera (i.e.: no batteries anywhere). You determine the exposure [with your separate exposure meter]. You set the shutter speed; you set the aperture. Then, after you have made the shot, you crank the film to re-cock the shutter.
I don’t mind any of this—in fact I love the fact that I never have to worry whether my camera’s batteries are fresh—as I do with every other system I own.
And if none of this has convinced you that this is a great system, think of this: it was a Hasselblad, not a Nikon or a Leica, that took the first pictures on the moon.
Questions or comments? Reach me at fvanriper@aol.com
Check out my latest book, Down East Maine/A World Apart
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